Author Comments

You have fallen into a vast underground maze. Can you find your way out, or will you end up trapped in darkness forever?

We recommend playing in a dimly lit room with your speaker or headphone volume turned up. It's best to play I Can't Escape late at night, as it is an eerie exploration experience.

Troubleshooting: This game requires flash player 11+. If you don't have flash player 11, the game will tell you, and you should download it (for free) here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ .

If you get the error "requires 3D hardware rendering," that means it's not running on your graphics card for some reason. Try right clicking the game, clicking settings, and make sure "enable hardware acceleration" is checked in the display tab, then refresh the page. If that doesn't work, try updating your graphics card driver or your flash player version.

If you're using windows 8, cheese123 mentioned to me that he couldn't get the game to run unless he ran chrome in windows 8 mode. If you're using windows 8 and having trouble, you can try that and see if it makes a difference. Thanks a lot to cheese123!

If you are still having trouble playing the game, feel free to send me a PM!

Reviews

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2013-02-16 20:30:04

Its great for getting someone into the whole horror feel, but it might help to mention when you make holes that you don't mark (not putting a black circle on the ground) it makes the game very annoying and actually takes away from the horror feel a little. Please fix that

There are no unmarked holes. There are the normal pits, the hidden pits (which are still visible, but covered in moss so they are tough to see - these are probably the ones you are falling in), trap doors which open a hole beneath you when you try to open them, and sometimes ghosts will push you down a level (they aren't quite as harmless as they seem!)

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2013-02-27 13:21:20

This is a beautiful retro game and I like the subtle detail you put into the ever deepening maze. I'm also really awed by the deceptive rules governing map generation. I really wish I knew how it was done.

I like what was discussed earlier with Vannius and agree it would make the game more satisfying while changing as little as possible.

Anyhow, I am only expanding on what was said earlier.

Finding an object inside the maze that unlocks the final exit on the first floor gives the player a more logical way of escaping and it would only require one more sprite.

To force the player to descend, and be demoralized by the atmosphere, you should scale the chance it spawns depending on how deep the player is. Maybe it could start spawning on level 7 (more than halfway down the maze) with a negligible chance of 1% and increase at an exponential rate until level 12 with a 25% spawn rate (or some terrible percentage because it's called I Can't Escape and replay value will come with the player's panic/fail/restarts and even further attempts of optimizing success, if there is any.)

As for the red 'X', which is a common impassable tile on lower levels, it should, as mentioned earlier, be replaced by the breakable stone doors as the final exit. As for the lower levels, you should decrease their appearances dramatically throughout, make them impassable without the tool and give them a 75-100% chance of allowing the player to ascend. As for the tool; one new sprite of a pickaxe (sledgehammer?) like you stated, placed in some previous human's remains because what is a soul consuming cavern without desiccated skeletons.

Thanks for the review! Yeah, I definitely think the "good" ending could've been improved, and there are lots of things I wanted to do but just didn't have the time (this game was made in a single month for the One Game A Month challenge). I may come back to this concept and make it a full game though, given how much people seem to like it!

As for the video, you're very perceptive! It's pretty cool to watch and read the notes (but only for people who have played the game - major spoilers!) If you're curious about how the procedural generation was done, and can read messy code, I actually uploaded the source code here: https://github.com/davidmaletz/CantEscape

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2013-02-27 19:16:29

Yeah, it's 6.5 mb (lots of textures and music), so it can take some time to load, but I think it's worth it! As for the bottom of the maze, you should explore and find out, it's pretty easy to go down! There is a bottom, and you'll know when you reach it.

Rated 3.5 / 5 stars2013-02-13 02:26:05

I lost on the first try, beat it on the second.

Here's all I know folks:

Always check the ground before you walk. Pitfalls and keys are easy to notice. Hidden pitfalls will have an inconspicuous gathering of plant matter that, if you look closely, is covering a hole. Most easily found ladders will have hidden pitfalls!

I won the game by picking up a key and walking into one of those walls that has a red gash on it. It teleported me right next to an untrapped ladder. Some of those walls make a locked door sound when you try to back into them. Trying this trick on other wall types may make you drop down a level.

Anyway, the game isn't terrifyingly scary, but it is unnervingly scary. The atmosphere and feeling of helplessness is spot on. Falling into the darker and more degraded parts of the dungeon, seeing stranger and scarier things, is an absolutely horrible experience (in a good way).